Need Guidance on Strategic Planning? Consider This.
Understand why strategy is important
In their book Strategic Planning: A Practical Guide, Peter Rea, Ph.D., and Harold Kernzer, Ph.D., note that no strategic approach fits all situations, and as a result, “contingency theory rules the day”. What is equally true, the authors say, is that all strategies require good sense and judgment. Further, while there is no singular school of thought on strategic planning, all definitions speak to these concepts:
Formulation of long-term goals and allocation of resources
Serves as a “vision of success” and how to achieve it
Necessity of free will and intentional design (Rea and Kerzner)
Strategic planning sets the course for your organization’s future and, as a result, impacts not only the organization as a whole but also each team and employee. Strategic planning, say Rea and Kerzner, “must function beyond an office of well-educated executives who are insulated from those who make the organization work”.
Strategic planning determines your organization’s direction, and a lack of focus leads to an erratic, uncontrolled lurching into tomorrow.
Formulate a strategic plan when conditions are right.
If your organization possesses the necessary skills, resources, and commitment from key decision-makers, then creating and implementing a strategic plan will serve you well. Without this trifecta that forms a stable foundation, though, any plan you make will not endure.
Furthermore, your strategic plan must head in a direction that others are willing to follow; this may mean initially making decisions and changes that are agreeable to most everyone, and once those pay off, you can push a bit further with more innovative plans.
Strategic Planning offers several questions to use as a basic framework for any organization’s strategy:
Strategic issues
Competitive advantages
Compatibility of products/services and customers
Innovation and growth
Stakeholders’ satisfaction
Strategy integration/measurement (Rea and Kerzner 11-12).
Think about the many ways your organization can grow
Insight has identified 70 diverse ways to grow - from sales to profit to people. Specific examples include branching into e-commerce or licensing, diversifying offerings, empowering employees as experts, and implementing a performance management system, which enables management to track progress. Check out this valuable guide for strategic growth ideas.
Get ready to make your organization BLOOM®
Making your plan visible to all employees and tracking your strategic progress are critical for successful implementation. Our proprietary performance management system, BLOOM®, enables administrators, managers, and employees to form a clear picture of the big picture—the strategic plan—organize it into meaningful goals and milestones, and then break it down into actionable tasks, allowing them to see where each employee fits into the overall plan.
Leaders provide the vision, managers provide the necessary notes and resources (e.g., spreadsheets and PDF files), and employees help carry out the plan’s strategies to reach the goal. Because BLOOM® includes timelines and due dates, anyone can see when a milestone has been completed and what’s past due.
Finally, aligning your plan with employee development and performance management functions, such as setting individual employee development goals and learning and development activities that employees and their managers mutually track, will accelerate your organization’s success.
Contact us for more information or to schedule a demo of BLOOM®.
Source: Rea, Peter J., and Harold Kerzner. Strategic Planning: A Practical Guide. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1997.